WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday called “completely erroneous” a published report that an initial 2020 deadline for completing the design of a $20 bill featuring Harriett Tubman could have been met.

Mnuchin told a congressional committee last month that the redesign of the $20 bill featuring Tubman, a 19th century abolitionist leader, had to be delayed.

The New York Times on Friday published an image of a $20 bill featuring Tubman which it said it had obtained from a former Treasury Department official. The image depicts the bill featuring Tubman in a dark coat with a wide collar and a white scarf. The newspaper said the design process was far enough along that the Trump administration likely could have met the original 2020 deadline.

Mnuchin and officials at the department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing rejected this assertion.

“As secretary, my first responsibility is to ensure all security and anti-counterfeiting measures are properly taken in accordance with BEP’s mandates,” Mnuchin said in a statement. “The suggestion that this process is being stalled is completely erroneous.”

Bureau of Engraving and Printing Director Len Olijar said that the government had not “scrapped” any earlier design and that all options remained on the table.

He said the design published by the newspaper was not a new $20 note because it lacked the new security features that the government plans to include.

“There is nothing about that illustration that even begins to meet technical requirements for the next family of notes,” Olijar said in his statement.

He said the bureau’s plan has always been to redesign the $10 and $50 bills first. He said the redesigned $20 will not come out until 2028.